Male deer, called bucks, have solid branching horns, called antlers, which they shed every year. When under attack, while they might prefer to run away, they will use their antlers as weapons to fight and show their supremacy.

October and November are peak months for bucks to claim dominance over their territories. Deer season ends Tuesday, so time is running out to bag that trophy buck.

Antlers start out in early spring around March as soft, blunt buds high in the deer’s head between the ears. Growing very rapidly, within two months, they reach a height to start branching. Still soft and covered with a velvety material, these extra branches are referred to as points (a four-point, six-point or eight-point buck, for example).

The velvety material covering the antlers, which are actually bone, allows the blood to grow them. White-tailed deer consume minerals and protein in their diets consisting of acorns, other grains and greenery in order to maintain the growth of their antlers.

Within a period of five months, their antlers become nearly full-grown and the velvet-like covering of bristly hair that protected the horns when they were soft and growing starts to shed off. What once was soft is now hard as stone and worthy of fighting off any rival.

During the time of shedding, the antlers become itchy and a buck will find a small sapling to rub his horns against to speed up this process. It’s not unusual for a hunter to bag an eight-point buck with his horns still covered in velvet because the hunting season for deer starts Aug. 15 in South Carolina.